Digging Mondays

I use to ruin my Sundays dreading Mondays so when I had my own business guess what day I had off. Mondays are often digging days, which is the best part of my job. I go with my friend Jon who knows every square inch of Detroit and also has Mondays off. This Monday we were on a last minute hunt for the movie set of Red Dawn. They wanted 16 old woodend crates, the kind produce comes in, to make a wall-mounted shelving unit. My goal with the movie industry is to be the "go-to-girl" for off beat vintage/found things. Jon's my secret weapon and has an encyclopedic mind of cast off stuff and where it all is in the city so naturally he knew just where to find them. We headed to the Southeast side. If you ask Jon the destination is just down the street, from my point of view it was waaaayyy far away, but the drive through the city always turns up some other treasure or happening that makes for good adventure and reminds Jon of some entertaining story. I had just been turned onto the most amazingly good and cheap produce store, Randazzo's and when we cruised by one of it's locations, well we had to stop. If you didn't know, Randazzos must be one of the oldest Detroit family-owned produce sellers. The turnover of product is amazing. The set up is simple. Produce is piled up on hand-built wood tables painted green. There's stuff you've never seen or heard of like Jujube (some kind of Asian plum that's sour). The customers are from 22 countries atleast making for fantastic people watching. We both left with 2 bags full of stuff for a total of $15.00. Find out where the closest Randazzo's is and check it out. It's old world Detroit at it's best. Pays to dig.